Page 36 of Justice for Francesca

“Must have been,” Francesca replied. She looked to Cruz. “When you interviewed Michael, he said he hadn’t seen Mila at the club since the opening, didn’t he?”

“Correct.”

“Tilly said the same thing.” She bit her lip. “Think he lied? Maybe let her slip in without a scan? Or even Tilly?”

Cruz leaned back in his seat, a finger rubbing against his bottom lip. “Possible. But why?”

Francesca tilted her head to one side and raised her eyebrow again. “Well, if either were going to kill her, they wouldn’t want to scan her ticket to get in, would they?”

“But why would they want to kill her? There’s nothing in our workup of him that suggests he had an issue with Mila. I mean, other than maybe being nervous about her ownership in the club.”

Francesca frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I tried to share with you information about Evans and Sequeira’s relationship, but you said you didn’t need to know.”

She sighed. “That wasn’t why you were asking me that question, and you know it. What’s the issue with Mila and the club?”

“We knew she was part owner based on our conversation with him. But what we didn’t know was that Mila was unhappy about the percentage provided to Tilly. In fact, she was the lone dissenting vote in granting Tilly an uninvested five percent. She didn’t vote against any other non-invested portion.”

Francesca considered the new information. “So there’s the connection to the Tilly angle. Possibly. Jealousy? Did she think Tilly was interested in Ethan?”

Cruz raised an eyebrow, clearly noting her use of the first name rather than the last name. Hopefully, she schooled her face enough to show her slipup didn’t mean anything. “Interesting. Francesca. Ethan.” He looked to Calder and grinned.

Calder grinned back and started singing, “Francesca and Ethan sitting in a tree. K-I?—”

Panic with a little bit of anger crept out before she could think better of what she said. “Continue that, and when you least expect it, I will dump one of those fancy coffees right on your junk. Hope would not like that at all, but it will be justified.”

His grin didn’t let up. He’d provoked her into admitting they were getting to her.

Returning to the case, Cruz said, “Tilly seems more tied to Triumph, although I didn’t get the impression that there was a formal relationship there. Evans was very clear that Tilly was not on his radar, nor was he on hers, so why Mila was bent on the money is a mystery.”

Francesca stood up and crossed to the whiteboard. “Tilly has five percent?”

“Yes.”

She wrote the percentages on the board in two columns—Tripoli, Cosmos, Triumph, and Mila in one column, Tilly, Michael, Ryleigh, and the rest of the employees in the other. “Sixty-nine percent of the club is tied up in ways she couldn’t argue about. They put money in, and her percentage was a commission.” Francesca stared at the board, tapping the dry-erase marker against her chin. “Tripoli said that they did a vote toraiseTilly’s percentage?”

“Raise hers, Michael’s, and Ryleigh’s.”

“Any idea what their original percentage was?”

Cruz flipped through his notes. “He didn’t specify, but the forensic accountant report says originally, those three were a part of the mass percentage of twenty-one percent. The new arrangement gave each of them their own percentage.” He looked up. “What are you thinking?”

“Well, a sea of employees who share in twenty-one percent of the profits? That’s less than one percent per person.”

“So?” Calder asked. “Either way, Mila’s share stayed the same.”

Francesca turned to face the two men. “Think about it. You have an issue to vote on. You only have ten percent. It’s not going to be enough to go against the big three, ever. If Tripoli, Cosmos, and Triumph are all in agreement, even if she had the other twenty-one percent behind her, she still couldn’t affect the outcome.”

“Right.”

“But now that they’ve pulled eleven percent of that away for those three individuals, the odds are even worse. A vote isn’t probably even necessary on issues.”

Cruz walked it through. “Tripoli and Cosmos own forty-nine percent. They’ve made sure not to tip the monopoly out of the gate. They could have easily ensured that they alone could make all decisions, but they purposefully didn’t. When we dug into their financials, ironically, Triumph is actually the wealthiest of them all, yet he has the least controlling interest of the big three.”

“Okay. So an issue comes up for a vote.” Francesca gestured to the percentages. “Consider each percentage as a vote. We’ll keep it simple. The club wants to add a day to its workload. Evans,” she emphasized, “gets twenty-five votes, Cosmos gets twenty-four, Triumph gets twenty, Mila gets ten, and the staff as a body gets twenty-one. If the staff vote yes on the old system, they only need one of the big three on their side to help tip the scale their way. Even if it’s Triumph, they’re at forty-one percent, and Mila, who does not have aworkinterest in the club, would vote for whatever is going to make her the most money. She could swing the vote in the opposite direction the largest shareowners might vote, which, given their history, is always in favor of what’s best for their employees and not themselves.”

“All three of them do seem to be high-level protectors. Change those percentages, and Mila’s odds of being on a winning team become eleven votes less likely,” Cruz deduced.

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